My First Painted Girlie Glam

Happy July 4th!

I mentioned last week that I was taking a workshop by Traci Bautista.  Here it is......my first painted girlie glam face.

This one is on an 8X10 piece of Masonite board, painted with acrylics, koi markers, gel pens, and Luminaire paint.

Here's one that I did with watercolor pencils and a water brush.

 

 

Taking a Traci Bautista Workshop.

I've been a fan of Traci Bautista for awhile.  She is having a 40% off sale on some of her workshops right now.

I signed up for the Girlie Glam Faces workshop.  Lesson #1 is learning to doodle faces with a black pen.  Here's one of mine -

 

For the next lesson, we will move into color.  Choosing the right color combinations is probably one of my biggest problems.  I love all of the bright colors, but I just don't know which ones to pick.

 

Here's some of Traci Bautista's work -

              

 

It's really pretty, isn't it?  She's written a couple books too.  I have both of them, of course, because I am a book hoarder.

 

Here's a link, in case anyone's interested in taking the workshop - Girlie Glam Faces,  The 40% discount code is SUMMER4SALE.

All About Faces

I worked on my faces again today.  Several months ago, I downloaded a video by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer called All About Faces.  I had watched it before, but today I decided to actually DO the exercises.  I had purchased a couple of these little chipboard things at Michaels for $1.50.  It's 4 pieces of 5 X 5 inch chipboard, held together in the corner with a metal ring.




I gessoed each piece of chipboard, front and back.  The one in the photo, above, had decorative edges.  The one that I used for my faces had straight edges.

First she shows you how to draw the outline of a face and learn the different areas that are recessed and protruding and how to shade them accordingly.

Then we moved on to painting a face.  Basically  I drew the outline, painted the hair, then used 3 colors to shade the face.

Here's my laughing girl -

She does this little tag exercise in the video.  I used a tag that I had decorated with alcohol inks, acrylic paint, and stencils.  I think this turned out really cute.

Here's a link to the workshop.  I enjoyed it. Julie also shows you how to collage a face with fabric, paint a face on fabric, and using a stencil for the faces.  It's $16.95 and you can download it right away.  I have gotten a few videos from Julie Fei-Fan Balzer.  She is very natural and easy to understand.  She shows all of the supplies, which I really appreciate.

A Little Piece of Faith

I had gotten some little 5X5 canvases for a dollar at Michaels.  They were liitle inexpensive canvases that already had a picture on them for a child to paint.  I figured that, for a dollar, they would be used for something.

Last night I was looking for something fast to do.  I brushed a couple coats of gesso on the canvas to cover the black picture outline.  I stamped on sheet music with black Stazon ink then cut a heart out of  a book page from an old book, then painted it with watery green Soy Paint.  I didn't have any pre-made chipboard letters.  So, I printed FAITH off the computer, enlarged it, taped it to some card stock, and used a razor knife to cut out each letter.  (You then have a FAITH stencil that you can use later).  I glued the heart and letters to the canvas with gel medium, added some charcoal pencil around the heart and dry-brushed Liquitex Black paint onto the letters.  I added some more black paint lightly around the edge of the canvas, then sprayed with clear archival, semi-gloss varnish.  Start to finish, it took about an hour.  I'm going to do some other words.  Maybe, BRAVE, STRONG, HAPPY, etc.

I must be honest - this was not, totally, my creation.  I was blog-hopping and saw a banner that had plaques very similar to this.  I've tried to search my history so that I could find the blog and give the artist credit, because I can't remember her name.  I haven't been able to find it yet, but when I do, I will add it to this post.  I don't want to take credit for any art that is not my idea.  You know, it's difficult because I'm always finding inspiration from different artists.  I'll see a technique or style and want to try it.  My intention is to use all of this acquired inspiration to build my very own style.  Many of the artists that I admire have tutorials and workshops to teach their techniques,  As a matter of fact, I am taking a workshop rigt now by Suzi Blu, called Fairies, so I will be painting some fairies very soon.

http://suziblu.typepad.com/a_lovely_dream/2013/03/-fairy-workshop.html